Thursday, April 12, 2018

Amazon, please tell us why | Kindle Unlimited page reads stripping

Amazon has recently filed a lawsuit against a UK self-publisher
for using clickfarms, bots and book stuffing to gain page reads in the
Kindle Unlimited program thereby scamming the program. This is a good
move for the industry since scamming the Kindle Unlimited program has
been a big issue for a long time, and many legitimate authors who do
nothing wrong are adversely affected by it. In particular, Amazon has
stated clearly that book stuffing is against their terms of service.
This is a good thing. You can find more information here. David
Gaughran has a Twitter
thread about it too.

That's all well and good, but here's what's bothering
me. And yeah, lots of things are bothering me lately. I really need to
take up yoga or meditation, and chill. Legitimate authors who are not
involved in book stuffing are being affected in Amazon's sweep to clean
up the book stuffers and the people who use clickfarms to game the
system.

I can totally understand that with a broad-brush algorithm-driven
sweep, sometimes legit people get caught up in it. However, if they are
legit, they should have some recourse through Amazon to have the
consequences reversed. For example, sometime last year, Amazon did a
big clean up for fake reviewers and bot driven review accounts. A lot
of legit reviewers got caught up in that and all their reviews were
deleted. Those reviewers who were affected who were not fake reviewers
appealed to Amazon, and their reviews and their ability to post reviews
restored. Of course, this time it affects authors and Amazon's bottom
line, but the results so far have been less than satisfactory for
authors who genuinely have not done anything wrong.

The first time an author noticed something had happened was sometime
early April while looking at their March earnings. Posting in an author
Facebook group yielded many responses from other authors who checked
their accounts and found the same thing had happened to them. Their
page reads for books enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program had been
significantly stripped - for some, by as much as 50%. Many of these
authors depend on their Amazon Kindle Unlimited earnings as their
source of income and livelihood. This is devastating for them. And
confusing. Why has this happened to them? They have done nothing wrong.

One author reportedly lost $1,200 in earnings overnight. That is not an
insignificant amount of money. You see why they are concerned?

Emails to Amazon were met with canned responses that were uninformative
and unhelpful. The responses were vague, and further inquiries led to
slightly threatening responses that implied the authors' KDP account
could be suspended. One author I know of did get his account suspended.
It's terrible.

The first email inquiry to Amazon resulted in this response.

Followed by another email saying that they had detected reading or
borrowing activity originating from accounts attempting to manipulate
Kindle services, and further violations of their policies could results
in account-level actions, up to and including termination of the KDP
account.

This is an example of an author trying to gain clarification and
asking for an explanation of what Amazon had found in their
investigation while defending her position.

For
the author above, as she explained - she had a great month in March
because she released three new books, one book a week for the last
three weeks of March. Each new book release saw a spike in page reads,
and continued increases as more people read the book then downloaded
the next book to read, and so on. The spikes were all organic increases
directly correlating to each book release. They are attributable. Cause
and effect. And yet she saw half her page reads disappear overnight.
Amazon tells her she is not getting them back.

Back to the correspondence from Amazon, the requests for
clarification resulted in this response.

Hello,

Thank
you for your email regarding the status of your account.

We
re-reviewed your account and have decided to uphold our decision. You
will not receive royalties for illegitimate reading or borrowing
activity.

As
we previously stated, we cannot offer details of our investigations or
advice on marketing services. If you have additional questions, you can
email us at content-review@amazon.com.

Regards,

Amazon
KDP

And this was the email received by the author who got his account
suspended.

Hello,

We
are reaching out to you as a follow-up on our previous communication
regarding reading or borrow activity originating from accounts
attempting to manipulate Kindle services. We detected continued
illegitimate activity after our communication and, as a result, we
have suspended your account to
protect our publishers and readers experience.

We
need you to take the necessary actions to stop the activity. We
encourage you to review any marketing services you may have used, since
you are responsible for ensuring that the strategies used to promote
your books comply with our Terms and Conditions. Once you have done so,
please send a response to content-review@amazon.com which includes a
statement that you reviewed all marketing services you may have used,
and confirms the discontinued use of any that might be responsible for
this activity.

Once
we receive this affirmation, we will reactivate your account. Please be
aware, any additional illegitimate activity may result in termination.
If we don’t receive this affirmation, we will terminate your account
after 14 days.

Regards,

Amazon
KDP

As far as I know, these authors claim they have not violated any terms
of service. The only advertising they've done is through
Amazon's advertising engine - Amazon Marketing Services,
Facebook
ads, and Bookbub ads. No clickfarms. No book stuffing. I will accept
what these authors say at face value and believe they are being
unfairly or incorrectly targetted and they have not violated
Amazon's terms of service. However, there is also the possibility that
the dishonest scammers are using clickfarms and legit authors' books to
hide their scamming activity. I have learned that scammers using
clickfarm bots will not only click-through the fake books or books some
people have paid for to falsely increase their page reads, but the bots
will also target other (legit) books in the same category and bot them
too. This strengthens the bots of the original paid for book, creates a
thread of botted books bolstering each other, and hiding the activity
of the original botted book. So perhaps these authors do have
clickfarm generated page reads unbeknownst to them and through no fault
of their own. I do not know and I do not have any way of verifying it.

Speculation of the causes of this wave of page stripping aside, what
bothers me is Amazon's response. I get that they are a big
organization, and they own at least 70% of the ebook market if not
more, and can do whatever they want. But their vaguely worded responses
and unwillingness to provide evidence of what the authors have done
wrong so they can correct the situation and prevent future incidents
when asked are not helpful. For the author who got his account
suspended, Amazon has asked in their email for him to "take the
necessary actions to stop the activity". Only they don't tell him what
that "activity" is, merely saying it's "illegitimate activity".
Specifics in this instance would be useful.

I
do believe that the authors affected are genuinely distressed,
confused, and want to understand what's happened to prevent it from
happening again. But there is no recourse. There is no way to appeal.
There isn't even a phone number to call to talk to a real person, only
an email
address to
send more emails. Is persistence going to help by sending email after
email? Or will they piss Amazon off since they say their decision is
final? Will it lead to their accounts being suspended? Certainly, no
one expects to see their stripped page reads
reinstated even if some may be holding out hope of that.

I'm not saying what Amazon did is wrong. I don't know enough to make
that judgment. They probably have very good reasons for targetting the
authors in Kindle Unlimited who were affected. Yes, what they did was
arbitrary but it's their company, their program, and they are
cleaning house. They can do whatever they want. However, I do think
that honest authors deserve an explanation beyond the form letters they
are getting. It's probably a lot of work and a lot of authors to
respond to (I do not know how many are affected), but I think they
deserve to know what Amazon thinks they did wrong and be presented with
the evidence to shut down their appeals once and for all, or prove
their innocence, and prevent future occurrences of the same.

The poor author who got his account suspended doesn't know why his
account was suspended. They won't tell him EXACTLY what they think he
did wrong. Many authors are now fearful they will be next. Afraid their
accounts will be suspended and their source of income cut off. Some are
considering taking their books out of the Kindle Unlimited program,
eschewing the exclusivity it gives Amazon and going wide, i.e., selling
their books on other platforms and with other ebook retailers. I know
many have gone into their dashboard and unchecked the little box which
says "auto renew" for their Kindle Unlimited listed books.

One author said this, which I think echoes the sentiment of many of the
authors who have been affected.

"It's
just a nightmare. I fear my account will be suspended tbh. I'm planning
and preparing for it mentally. April has started very strongly as a
result of a strong March. The snowball has gained momentum. And what
should be a moment of enjoyment and pride and relief and happiness, is
a time of fear and disappointment."

There are other options if their account is suspended or terminated by
Amazon, or if they simply want to leave Kindle Unlimited and Amazon.
They can sell through Draft2Digital where
their books will still be available on Amazon as well as other major
ebook retailers. There's also Smashwords,
another ebook retailer who publishes books for sale on their own
website and distributes the books to other major ebook retailers. They
can consider setting up their own e-commerce website to sell their
books directly to their readers although that would require a large
existing fanbase and serious advertising for discoverability. There are
other options but none of them as convenient and as far reaching as
Amazon.

Personally, I do not have a Kindle Unlimited subscription as a reader.
I prefer to buy my books and "own" them, and I buy ALL my books from
Amazon. However, I know a lot of people who rely on the Kindle
Unlimited program for their reading because they are voracious readers
and cannot afford to feed their reading habit otherwise. Why am I
interested in writing an entire blog post about this if I do not use
Kindle Unlimited, you ask? Because it affects a group of authors I care
about - romance authors and thereby affecting romance readers. Romance
readers are EXTREMELY voracious readers. Some claim to read as many as
three books a day. If authors can't make money via the Kindle Unlimted
program, they will leave it. This means fewer books in Kindle
Unlimited, fewer books for voracious romance readers to consume. It's
pretty much a lose-lose situation. Of course, it's not just romance
authors. Other fiction and non-fiction authors have been hit too. For
once, I don't think the authors are overreacting. This hurts their
bottom line. Their livelihood. They have a right to ask for answers.
And I think they are entitled to answers.

10 comments:

WOW I don't use KU but I heard about this from a Aussie author the other day and as a person who got caught up in the review mess I know how honest authors must be feeling at the moment and sometimes trying to prove you are innocent with Amazon is frustrating. I do hope that the honest authors get things fixed up and soon and that they are back payed for what they have lost

As an Amazon author, I haven't had any issues with my page reads but I'm based here in the US. I'm sorry it's happened to authors who did nothing wrong and that they can't seem to get any answers. This is why, as an author, I fear using any type of promotion tool or company but Amazon. There are just too many opportunities for it to end like this in that gray area.I do have a KU account, and all 68 of my novels are offered on KU for my readers and I've never had any issues. I hope that continues. Honestly, Amazon has been nothing but a good thing for my books. It's a tough predicament either way.

I hope it gets handled soon. It's unfair to all authors who played by the rules, and it's sad that a good thing was ruined by people who cheated.

A lot of people were talking about this on FB yesterday and I agree, something should be done about all the book stuffing and cheating, it's not fair to the authors who are doing things the right way. I haven't subscribed to KU so I had no idea it was that bad.

With millions of books in the Kindle Store, and many thousands of new books uploaded each month, a new author gets swamped in the tsunami of content. When your first book is in KU, it’s free to subscribers, so you get readers.

For authors who already have a publishing catalogue, the picture’s much less clear.

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I love all things beauty and makeup, reading and books, and also have a keen interest in cooking and food. Combined with a husband who loves wine, we write a number of blogs that align with our interests. I have two blogs: Deanna's World which focuses on all things books and beauty, and Daz In The Kitchen which is my cooking and food blog. I hope you visit and stay around.

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